Executive Calendar

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, it has now been 26 days since House Democrats voted to impeach the President of the United States. This is a predictable ending to an increasingly embarrassing impeachment inquiry. Apparently, Speaker Pelosi, Chairman Schiff, Chairman Nadler, and others were in such a big hurry to get this done before the end of the year, they have obviously gotten cold feet because they have refused to present the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate so that we can have the trial.

As the Presiding Officer knows, ordinarily, if you are presented with a situation in which the prosecution refuses to proceed to put on the evidence in the case, they are dismissed as a routine matter--dismissal for want of prosecution--or if, in fact, they do intend to present the Articles of Impeachment, there is a fundamental notion of basic fairness included in the guarantee of a speedy trial that is obviously being neglected, avoided, and abused by the Speaker and her leaders in the House.

Our Democratic colleagues in the House rushed through their investigation in only 12 weeks, and it ended up passing Articles of Impeachment on a partisan basis. After repeatedly saying that this is a grave and urgent matter, it seems that Speaker Pelosi has experienced some buyer's remorse and has questioned just how grave and urgent it really is.

Here we are, as I said, 26 days later, and she still has not sent the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate. As we know, even though some have suggested the Senate could somehow proceed to trial absent the delivery of those articles here, we can't try the case until the charges are delivered.

Finally, last Friday, the Speaker indicated that she will transmit the articles this week. They will also have to name impeachment managers, Representatives from the House who will come over and actually present the charges to the Senate and attempt to produce evidence in support of those charges.

It remains to be seen whether the Speaker will deliver the articles this week. She has been withholding them, as I said, for nearly 4 weeks now, claiming that it is part of her strategy to get leverage over the Senate, a strategy that has yielded no positive results.

In fact, what we have seen is, the Speaker has zero leverage in the Senate. She runs the House; there is no doubt about that. But the Senate is a separate body. We don't take our instructions from the House, just as the House does not take their direction from the Senate.

Before the House even voted on the articles, Leader McConnell said that the Senate should follow the same bipartisan framework used to guide the Clinton impeachment trial. I say ``bipartisan'' because, at that time, 100 Senators agreed to this path forward.

The logic goes this way: If it was good enough for President Clinton, then it should be good enough for President Trump. Suffice it to say, the Speaker disagrees. Instead of sending the Articles of Impeachment over and letting 100 Members of the Senate decide how best to proceed, she chose to take matters into her own hands.

Apparently, ``the sole Power of Impeachment,'' as the Constitution describes the House's role, isn't good enough for Speaker Pelosi. She is now trying to assume what the Constitution says is the Senate's ``sole Power to try all Impeachments.''

We shouldn't be fooled. Despite her claims, this is not an effort to create a fair process. A fair process would be like the Bill Clinton impeachment trial, which was agreed to by 100 Senators on a bipartisan basis. Our Democratic colleagues in the House threw fairness out the window months ago. This is Speaker Pelosi singlehandedly ignoring the express commands of the Constitution for her own perceived political benefit.

Republicans aren't the only ones who think the Speaker has gone too far. There is bipartisan agreement that Speaker Pelosi should send the Articles of Impeachment over here forthwith.

A number of our Senate Democrats have expressed their desire to get started with the impeachment trial. I think the senior Senator from California--our friend Mrs. Feinstein, same State as the Speaker of the House--summed it up best when she said:

The longer it goes on, the less urgent it becomes. . . . So if it's serious and urgent, send them over. If it isn't, don't send it over.

Irrefutable logic.

We are hearing from a growing number of House Democrats who have split from Speaker Pelosi and say that it is time to send the articles. For example, the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said that ``we control it in the House, Mitch McConnell controls it in the Senate.'' Senator McConnell might disagree with that, but that is what the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee said. He conceded: ``I think it is time to send the impeachment to the Senate.''

With Speaker Pelosi facing increasing backlash from Members of her own party, including her rank-and-file Democrats, you can't help but wonder who is winning this game that she is playing. It is clearly a game. It is laughable to say that she is doing this for the sake of the American people or the Constitution.

A new poll released by The Hill and Harris last week showed that 58 percent of voters nationwide think it is high time for the House to send the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate--58 percent.

This delay isn't putting President Trump in a bad position. In fact, it is further proving the partisan motivations that have been driving the House impeachment inquiry from the very beginning.

Speaker Pelosi obviously isn't doing this for the good of House Democrats. Their role in the impeachment inquiry is finished. As I mentioned, a number of her own Members think she is making a big mistake by holding up the articles.

This clearly isn't giving our Senate Democratic colleagues a leg up. Several of our colleagues in the Senate have voiced their desire to get this thing going, as one has said. In fact, I think it is actually harming our Senate Democratic colleagues who are on the Presidential campaign trail.

Can you think what Senator Warren, Senator Sanders, Senator Klobuchar, Senator Bennet, and Senator Booker--who, until this morning, were all vying for the chance to be President--are thinking about the desirability of sitting here in the Senate Chamber 6 days a week while the Iowa caucuses are coming up on February 3, the New Hampshire primary, South Carolina, Nevada, among others? The Iowa caucuses are happening just 3 weeks from today. New Hampshire's primary is the week after that. These Senators on the Democratic side who are running for the Democratic nominations have campaigns that are in high gear. I imagine the last place they want to be is in Washington, DC, sitting in this Chamber during an impeachment trial.

During the trial, every Member of the Senate will be sitting at our desks, 6 days a week, until we are finished. And no, we will not have our electronic devices. I just saw a piece of cabinetry in the cloakroom where we will be required to turn over our iPads and our iPhones. This will just be us, not speaking--we don't have a speaking role; we have a listening role--sitting for hours each afternoon, 6 days a week, until we finish this process. That doesn't leave a lot of time for our Senate colleagues who are running for the Democratic nomination to talk to voters in Iowa or New Hampshire.

The longer Speaker Pelosi holds on to the Articles of Impeachment, the closer a trial gets to overlapping with those key dates. You have to imagine that our friends on the other side who are running for President are getting a little nervous. Cory Booker, who left the campaign trail this morning, recently said this trial could be a ``big, big blow'' to his campaign. Even a short, 2-week trial could mean ``literally dozens of events we won't be able do.'' While that is no longer true for Senator Booker, it is for the remaining candidates.

Senator Warren shared this same sentiment, and she thinks being in Washington would prevent her from being able to build critical, personal connections on the campaign trail. Had Speaker Pelosi immediately transmitted the Articles of Impeachment at the end of last year, it would have been the first item on the Senate's agenda when we reconvened in January. We could have used the Clinton model to guide the process, the same process the leader has promised since before the articles even passed.

I can't help but imagine that the Senate and the American people would be close to putting this entire saga behind us, but, instead, the Speaker sat on the articles. She stood in the way of the Senate's duty to try the impeachment trial, and she stood in the way of President Trump's due process rights.

The only people who seem to gain anything from this are the Democrats who are running for President but who are not U.S. Senators and, thus, aren't going to be tied up during the impeachment trial. Oddly enough, one of these candidates and his son are looming figures in the impeachment inquiry. If you are Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, or any other candidate who isn't a Member of the Senate, you have to be glad that the Speaker sat on these articles for nearly 4 weeks. Having your competitors stuck in Washington, literally in their seats, while you are hitting the campaign trail there--well, that seems like a pretty good advantage to me.

The timeline the Speaker created is all but sure to interfere with the Iowa caucuses. It is remarkable that Democrats' effort to impeach a President of the opposing party could end up having a negative impact on the Presidential candidates of their own. All of this is to say, it is time to bring this embarrassing chapter to an end.

Republicans and Democrats and the American people all agree that it is time to get the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate so that we can try the case according to our duties under the Constitution and the American people and the Congress can move on.

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